Pornographer Exhibits Higher Journalistic Standards than CNN Anchor

CNN's
Don Lemon hosted pornographer Larry Flynt on Sunday's Newsroom,
ostensibly to talk about an upcoming Supreme Court case in which the
1988 case of Hustler Magazine v. Falwell is being cited as a precedent. But Lemon quickly turned to politics, asking the Hustler
publisher to regurgitate tawdry details of Republican Senator David
Vitter's prostitution scandal (as if CNN wasn't in the process of actively rehabilitating a Democratic politician caught in a similar scandal) and begging Flynt to reveal "tips" and "hints" about other politicians who might be exposed.

It's bizarre that an anchor on CNN, which touts itself as "the most
trusted name in news," would ask a pornographer to smear public
officials by name without any independent journalistic corroboration.
Larry Flynt is no gift to ethics, but he seemed to understand better
than Don Lemon the need for restraint.

Talking about an unnamed senator who might be gay, Flynt claimed "we
were ready to expose the senator at one time, but then the guy who is
really his lover was actually married and that produced a kind of
conflict that we didn't want to - that we didn't want to go to."

If
that element of Flynt's story is true, does anyone think CNN would show
similar restraint in harming a third party if given the chance to
torpedo a Republican's career?

Here's a partial transcript from the 6pm ET Newsroom on October 3, an interview later replayed in the 10pm ET hour:

DON LEMON: Hey, let's talk about the Senate race in my home state of
Louisiana. We're talking about David Vitter and Charlie Melancon. Of
course, they're running - Charlie Melancon is taking on David Vitter.
How did a Hustler interview end up in a campaign ad for Melancon?

LARRY FLYNT: Well, we were the ones who really outed Vitter on this, and it
wasn't a question of an indiscretion with a prostitute in Washington.
But we concluded a case with the investigation in New Orleans as well.
This guy was like the Energizer Bunny at the same time he was going
around about abstinence, you know.

I mean, he was probably one of the biggest philanderers in the
Senate. So, I'm often accused when I expose people like him, just doing
it to expose his sex life. Nothing can be further from the truth. What
I'm exposing is the hypocrisy. I don't want...

LEMON: Well, let me ask you. You have offered $1 million for anyone
who can come forward to your magazine to say that they have had sex with
a high-ranking official. Are you still doing that and do you have any
tips yet?

FLYNT: We're still doing it. We always got ongoing investigations, but they take a while.

LEMON: So no tips?

FLYNT: Pardon?

LEMON: No tips yet?

FLYNT: I'll give you a couple of clues. We know we've got a gay
senator, you know. We just like to see him come out of the closet. And I
think we'll be exposing that in the next few months if he doesn't.

And I've got a really great story, a very high-ranking Republican
talking to a woman on a cell phone, and we have the tape where he said
- oh, she mentioned family values to him. He said, "Oh, family values,
that's crap, I just talk about that on television." Well, we felt, boy,
this is a real doozie.

LEMON: You want to give us an idea of either one of these guys? The senator? No hints?

FLYNT: I can't do that. My attorney says you can't use the tape
because it was taped in Pennsylvania, which requires two-party consent
so you can't use it. So, I mean, those are the kind of things that we're
up against. But we constantly have interesting investigations going on
at all times. We were ready to expose the senator at one time, but then
the guy who is really his lover was actually married and that produced a
kind of conflict that we didn't want to - that we didn't want to go
to. We wanted better evidence.

- Rich Noyes is Research Director at the Media Research Center. You can follow him on Twitter here.

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